The Clippers Lost Kawhi, Five First-Round Picks — and Now They Can't Hold the Ball

Three games into the post-Kawhi era, the LA Clippers have a 1-2 record, a plus-3.3 point differential, and a turnover problem that is quickly becoming the defining trait of their season. Through three games, Los Angeles has coughed up 68 turnovers — a hair over 22.7 per game — and no one is responsible for more of them than the player the franchise has handed the keys to.

Darius Garland is averaging 24.0 points and 7.0 assists on 49.1 percent shooting, which reads like a star turn. Then there's the other column: 6.0 turnovers per game. He committed nine in the loss to the Lakers on Oct. 23 (a game in which L.A. finished with 26 as a team, per ClutchPoints), six more in the 108-101 loss at Oklahoma City, and three in the opening win over Sacramento. That's 18 turnovers in three games from a player who averaged 2.9 per game across 45 appearances last season in Cleveland.

The pattern is not random. It's the natural friction of a point guard learning a roster that turned over almost completely around him — Kawhi Leonard traded to Toronto, James Harden gone, Ivica Zubac gone, and a supporting cast blending 38-year-old Brook Lopez with guard Keaton Wagler and recent arrivals like Rui Hachimura and Derrick Jones Jr. Garland himself preached patience during camp. Patience is easy in October; possessions are not.

Why it stings more than a normal early-season slump

Because the Clippers don't have the structural cushion to absorb it.

The NBA stripped the franchise of five first-round picks and fined Steve Ballmer $30 million in September over the Leonard salary-cap circumvention findings, and Ballmer is serving a one-year ban from league functions. There is no draft-pick safety net coming, no obvious tanking path, and no cap flexibility windfall. The roster in the building is the roster. Every wasted possession is one the organization can't buy back later.

The early performance data says the same thing from a different angle. The Clippers rank 24th in the league in offensive rating at 110.4, per team rankings — that's with a 40.9 percent mark from three on 36.7 attempts per game, which is essentially unsustainably good shooting papering over the giveaways. Take even a couple of Garland's nine-turnover nights down to four, and the Lakers game may not slip away in the third quarter. Turnovers are the one inefficiency that no amount of shooting luck fixes.

The schedule won't wait

Wednesday's home date with the Lakers (3-0, 128.0 points per game) is a rematch of the 125-117 loss, and it's followed by a road trip through Minnesota and Golden State. L.A.'s defense has been fine — 109.7 allowed per game, 107.2 defensive rating over the last five — but "fine" isn't going to hold up against the best offense in the early West if the Clippers keep handing back a fifth of their possessions.

There's encouragement to be found. Lopez, in his 19th season at 38, is averaging 18.0 points in 23.3 minutes and has been the stabilizer. Wagler has looked like a rotation player, not a project. And the Clippers are 3-0 against the spread in their last five per team trends, which reflects a team the market consistently undervalues rather than one that's playing clean basketball.

But the story of this week isn't a moral victory or a near-miss. It's that a franchise already operating with the thinnest institutional margin in the league has handed its offense to a guard who is turning it over on roughly one in five possessions — and the schedule is about to get considerably less forgiving. Garland's turnover rate is the single variable most likely to determine whether this transition season is respectable or unravels by December.